Sir, - It was Eleanor Roosevelt who said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent". What would she have to say, then, to the Irish politician who gives the public permission to treat him like a doormat? He's asking for it.
Your columnist Kathy Sheridan makes some very accurate and depressing points about the doormat-like behaviour of many Irish politicians and how cycles of representations are clogging up our local and national bureaucracies (Opinion, September 26th). But surely the question to ask is why those bureaucracies are failing to respond effectively to the public. Why is that in the Celtic Tiger, Freedom of Information era, the public still feels it needs the intervention of a politician to help it find its way around the bureaucracy?
Making these systems more accountable and more responsive was one of the intentions behind such legislation as the Freedom of Information Act. It would surely be in the interest of the public representative then, to ensure that this reform is successful and ongoing. Unless, of course, they prefer to be the doormat. - Yours, etc.,
Senator KATHLEEN O'MEARA, Silver Street, Nenagh, Co Tipperary.